After spending countless hours reviewing dog houses to purchase as an outdoor shelter for our Red Foot and Sulcata Tortoises, I’ve narrowed it down to Boomer & George Log Cabin Dog House vs. Precision Extreme Outdoor Dog House. I decided against the Precision dog house and purchased the Boomer & George dog house because it is made of wood and…
Category: Turtle Log
1/2 of the Russian Tortoise habitat project is in
Today I received 1/2 half of the items I’ve ordered to complete the Russian Tortoise habitat. They are two Fluker’s 5.5″ ceramic dome lamp, a 24″ Exo-Terra Repti-Glo 10.0 UVB fluorescent bulb and ZooMed’s Aquasun Aquarium Controller. Expected delivery by Monday is the other 1/2 of the package, which consists of a 30″ fluorescent strip light (to enclose and power…
Review: Designs by Nature, LLC’s 3D Congo background (BJ241L)
After much contemplation regarding habitat sizing, I put in an order with Designs by Nature, LLC. for a 36″ x 24″ Congo 3D background (BJ241L). I had to downsize to 36″L from 48″L due to limited room in my rusty little apartment. This background will be used exclusively for the Russian tortoise habitat project. I must say, my first experience…
Russian Tortoise habitat build update
A small update on the Russian Tortoise habitat which I’ve temporarily placed on hold due to my finals at Cal Poly Pomona, spring break and first two week at a new career. I’ve finalized the parts needed to complete this build. Enclosure by Show Case Cages Rather than building an enclosure from scratch or using a glass terrarium, I’ll be…
Russian tortoise habitat in progress
A few articles back, I wrote about my plans for revamping the habitat for our red eared sliders and putting the Russian tortoise habitat in the backburner until mid spring. Because the planning, costs and logistics required to create the habitat I envisioned for my red eared sliders will be quite involved and the construction process being highly meticulous, I’m…
Custom aquatic turtle wet / dry filter schematic
I’ve taken a few minutes of my spare time to dissect grifloki’s (see previous entry) custom wet / dry filter build and constructed a diagram of the diassembled filtration system and identified its components. This is for those who want to build a similar system. I modified the filtration elements to include two lighting grates that sandwiches a custom polyester…
Some research, some rough sketch of the future red-eared slider vivarium
I’ve done some more indepth research on custom sumps and wet/dry filter setups and designs through various aquarium hobbyist and reef keepers’ web sites. I’ve gained a lot of valuable knowledge while researching and then I came acrossgrifloki’s YouTube channel where he demonstrates a fully customized turtle tank using the mechanics I’ve described. After reviewing grifloki’s video and researching various sump…
Side view of the aquatic turtle habitat design
Here’s a side view of the proposed aquatic turtle habitat design and a rough idea of how things will work when they are all put in place. I’m contempating whether or not to attach a submersible pump to the reverse stand pipe that pulls water from the overflow reservoir and push it to the sump. The alternative is to rely…
Designing the perfect red eared slider tank
I am in the process of designing a complete aquatic turtle habitat for my two red-eared sliders, whom I’ve adopted from my sister. They were originally given to her from her boyfriend when they were mere hatchlings, not so different from the ones you usually see at the pet store (which are illegal, by the way, as turtles less than…